Company lawyer Brad Smith spoke in Brussels about government reactions to terror attack.

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In a speech given in Brussels on Tuesday, Microsoft lawyer Brad Smith said that in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in France, the company turned over data requested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on behalf of the French government in 45 minutes.

“Just two weeks ago, the French Government sought the content of e-mails from two customer accounts held by Microsoft when it was in the midst of pursuing the Charlie Hebdo suspects,” Smith said according to Bloomberg. Describing the request, Smith said that Microsoft employees had to make sure the request “was proper” before pulling the e-mail content in question.

Smith went on to address movement by European Union countries as well as UK Prime Minister David Cameron to allow more government spying and crack down on terror speech. In France and Germany, political leaders said on Tuesday that they "expect US Internet and social- networking companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google to preemptively remove terror content from their services--or face new laws aimed at forcing them to do so," according to Nasdaq's news service. Cameron, too, recently said that if he were reelected he'd push to have a backdoor put into all encrypted messaging systems.

The Microsoft lawyer pointed to his company's participation as a sign that companies and government could work together within the confines of the law rather than through constant government snooping.

“If those in government want to shift the line between safety and privacy, the appropriate path is to do so by changing the law rather than asking those of us in the private sector to shift this balance ourselves,” Smith said according to the Los Angeles Times. “Democratic societies, not private companies, need to decide on the balances to be struck between public values such as public safety and personal privacy.”